Bridges
by elphabathedelirious32
Summary: She cried as the adrenaline left her system and she realized exactly what kind of game she’d been playing. Oneshot, postmusical.


**A/N: This just popped into my head and begged to be written down. I merely obliged it. It's short and really random. At the end of the musical. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

At first, she was cold; her gaunt body soaked in unforgivingly icy water from head to foot, in only her simply black shift, clinging uncomfortably to her. Unable to see in the total darkness, she had no choice but simply to pull herself up and sit, after the harsh pain of falling in here from the floor above. She could feel bruises coming on her arms and legs and blood welling from where the stones that made up the floor were laid unevenly and had cut into her when she landed. Cold wetness from her long hanging hair dripped down her face and into her hazel eyes, mingling with the tears she cried as the adrenaline left her system and she realized exactly what kind of game she'd been playing.

But as time went by, she grew hot but not dry in the dank chamber where the stones of the walls and floor themselves seemed to cry moist tears, not to mention the consistent leak from above. The air around her was still cold, though, from the damp, and she realized she had a fever. The miserable contrast of the grey, cool, dead air against her burning skin made her feel even more like crawling deeper into this hole and dying. She was ill, violently, several times; this helped somewhat in that there was nothing left in her to piss or shit out, but it did not help the air or the stench. She laid her head against the harsh wall and cried tears that felt cool in comparison with her skin.

At last, after forever, she fell asleep with her head against the wall, and was next awakened by a soft knocking above her head.

…

He helped her emerge. Somehow, he still had his human strength. He didn't bother to question it; there was nothing left that surprised him anymore. She looked worse than he did, though. Her green skin was pale and sheened with beads of sweat, despite that when he'd opened the trapdoor he'd felt a gust of cold air rise up to meet him. She was thinner now even than the last time he'd seen her, but maybe that was just the absence of her heavy, elegant dress, and not least of all her usual manner of haughty, sardonic dignity that she was too sick to affect. Her arms and legs, stemlike as they emerged from her simple black dress, were purpled with bruises; her eyes were barely open and clouded over with fever, and her skin nearly burned his burlap hands when he touched her. The long dark hair hung wet and elflocked over her shoulders, and she struggled to stand up on her own, but he refused to let her.

"Yero," she managed, her voice scratchy- funny that she'd been covered in and surrounded by the coveted water that had in such a short time grown hateful to her from its omnipresence in the bleak little chamber, yet had had none to drink- "I have to- we have to leave-"  
"Ssh," he hushed her gently. He reached for the bucket beside him, having been refilled by the sentinels. They'd believed it, all of it- that she was evil, that she was dead, that he wasn't himself. Miraculous, the propensity for human ignorance. He filled the ladle with water and held it to her; she took it from him and drank greedily, gratefully, the cold shining diamonds trickling over her chin and neck and flowing down her throat. She took her own hand in the water and smeared it over her hot forehead. He helped her to stand, leaning on him, and wrapped her in the blanket he had brought with him- she was fevered, but the cold air could only worsen her condition. She looked out the thin slit of a window at the jubilant crowds below them and turned to him, her eyes clearer now and wide with apprehension.

"We can never come back to Oz, can we?" she asked him without really asking. Even so, he shook his head gently. She looked eastwards, cocking her head slightly, obviously again seeing something he couldn't. "I just wish…I wish Glinda could know," she said, knowing even as the words passed her lips that it was impossible, that even if it were safe enough to tell Glinda and to trust that she wouldn't drag them outside and try unsuccessfully to clear their names, just to get near her would be impossible.

_Burn your bridges. _But the idea brought a deep, pervasive ache to Elphaba's heart; and she rejected it. She looked upwards and briefly closed her eyes, as if she could send a telepathic message to Glinda by thinking hard enough. _I'm a witch, damn it, why can't these powers ever do something good? _She closed her eyes tighter and focused her thoughts into a laser beam of light, racing towards her friend. _Because I knew you, I _know _you, I have been changed for good_.

She returned abruptly to the world and took Fiyero's cloth hand in her own fevered green one. She embraced him, tightly, before they began to walk to the portal that would transport them away from here, probably forever. She didn't know if Glinda had heard her mental cry, she didn't know if any good would come of it. But she had _tried_, and maybe after all her powers had, in some roundabout way, done good, and that would have to be enough.


End file.
